China's information industry maintained its strong, steady growth in the first half of the year against the backdrop of global economic slowdown and the sluggish development of the world information industry.
Statistics show that the added industrial value of China's electronic products manufacturing was 91.9 billion yuan (US$11.07 billion) for the first six months of this year, a 10.3 percent increase year-on-year.
According to statistics released from a recent forum on the development of the information industry held in Tianjin, a port city in north China, electronic products sales totaled 441.3 billion yuan (US$53.16 billion) for the six-month period, a year-on-year increase of 16.7 percent and export volume was US$38.59 billion, a 33.3 percent year-on-year increase accounting for 27.2 percent of China's total exports.
Software exports reached US$600 million during the six-month period, a year-on-year increase of 41 percent.
By the end of June, communication services income totaled 218.94 billion yuan, up 15.6 percent from the same period last year; the number of telephone subscribers was 375 million, with the number of new subscribers increasing by 8.54 million per month on average.
There were 30.2 telephones per one hundred people, and 85.3 percent of China's administrative villages had access to telephones. The number of persons with access to the Internet was 39.759 million by the end of June.
Six Chinese companies are competing in China's communications market.
(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2002)
